Are you curious about how to start flowers indoors?  If you’re anything like us, we’re all about squeezing as much flowery goodness out of a year as we can.  Starting your flowers indoors and planting them out as soon as it’s safe is one way to get flowers sooner than by dumping a packet of seeds directly into the ground after the last frost.

Don’t get me wrong.  The dump-a-packet method works great for some seeds.  Larkspur, lupines, and bupleurum are three flowers we grow that like a bit of freeze-thaw action to get going.  We sow those directly into the ground in fall or winter.

There are, however, a lot of flowers that do not like freezing temperatures.  Here in zone 6a there’s a chance we’ll get a dusting of snow in April.  As you probably know, snow or frost are surefire ways to lose a bed of, say, zinnia seedlings.  But starting those same zinnia seeds inside around the first of April can give us blooms by June.  We’d be waiting until July for blooms if we planted them directly into the ground after our last frost date.

Let’s talk about some of the things you’ll want to have on hand to get your seedlings started.

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Tools to Help You Start Flowers Indoors

Growing Containers

When I started growing flowers, I was as thrifty as possible.  I cut off the bottom three inches of a milk jug, poked holes into it, and used it as a seed germinating tray.  A square of plastic wrap across the top worked as an easy way to keep moisture inside while the seeds germinated.  They worked great.  The only downside to those thrifty trays was the stench of old milk if I had forgotten to rinse them thoroughly.  Ugh.  My eyes are watering at the thought of that smell.

These days I use a clear, plastic cookie container to germinate my seeds.  Once upon a time Mom went to market with cookies and a few other delectable things.  She has a box of clear plastic cookie containers leftover from those days, and they work perfect as little plant germinating trays.  A friend of mine uses disposable aluminum foil pans with clear plastic lids.  Maybe some day we’ll get a bit more fancy and use these plug trays.

Soil and Soil Blocks

Several years ago I stumbled upon the concept of soil blocking.  You make little squares of soil with a handy tool and plant your seed into the top of the block.  It eliminates the need for so much single use plastic, and reduces plant shock when they’re moved to a larger container or planted in the ground.  We invested in two soil block makers, one that makes 2″ blocks and one that makes 3/4″ blocks.  I use the 3/4″ blocks for the initial seed germination process for a lot of smaller seeds.  The other one hasn’t been used a ton, to be honest.  I’m thinking of giving it a try again this year for some of the larger seeds like zinnia and cosmos that don’t fit well into the smaller blocks.

There are a few tricks to making soil blocks that work well.  One is to add plenty of water to the soil.  I go for a consistency of a very wet brownie dough.  Another tip is to mound up that wet brownie dough about twice as high as the soil blocker before making the blocks.  When I push the block maker down into the mound, water oozes out the top if I’ve done it right.  I scrape off the excess, deposit them onto a tray, and they’re ready to be planted.

We germinate our seeds in 3/4″ soil blocks made with a seedling mix, something like this, that we usually buy from our local Orme Hardware store.  We don’t use a high volume of this since it’s just used for seed germination.  We’ll top the blocks with vermiculite to cut down on that green fungus that sometimes grows on soil under lights.

Trays

Once our seedlings have a set of true leaves, we transfer them into a larger tray so they can grow on until it’s time to transition them to the outdoors.  The most common transition is to a 1020 tray like this, with a 1204 insert like this.  Thrifty tip:  we like to reuse the 1020 trays after giving them a good scrub.

Our favorite soil mix to use when bumping up these baby seedlings is Better Gro of Ohio.  We buy it here locally or in Berlin, OH.  I’m planning to add a small amount of compost to my mix this year to see if I can cut down on fertilizing the seedlings.

Grow Lights

Want to know the best way to ensure success when you start flowers indoors?  Invest in grow lights.  They are, hands down, the best money we’ve spent on any kind of seed starting equipment.  We bought this kind a few years ago and they’re still going strong.  You can certainly start seeds indoors on sunny windowsills if you’re a beginner.  We did it for several years with modest success.  But if you’re growing a large volume or want healthy plants, grow lights are a game changer.

We use standard 1020 trays that measure about 11″ by 21 1/2″ so a grow light like this one (4′ with 8 tubes) can fit two trays under it.  That means an 8′ table with two 4′ lights can hold eight trays of plants.  I currently have three 4′ lights for trays and one 2′ light for my baby plants that haven’t been moved up to trays yet.  That’s not a lot of tray space, but with a fair amount of shuffling it’s doable.  We need a greenhouse in a very bad way, but for now this works.

Heat Mat

I also like to add a heat mat to some of the flowers that we grow that need a bit of warmth.  Since we start our flowers in a part of the basement that is unheated, it can get pretty cool.  Most heat loving summer flowers like celosia, zinnia, or gomphrena need a bit of extra warmth to germinate.

If you aren’t growing a large number of flowers, a heat mat isn’t a must have.  Your heat loving flowers may not germinate as well without it, but with the heat from a grow light, you should still get a decent amount of germination.

Other Tools

There are several other tools you might like to have on hand when you start flowers indoors.  One is a trowel for mixing soils or homemade fertilizers.  It’s also great to have a scoop for filling trays with soil.  I took a square juice jug and cut it in the shape of a scoop and it works great.  I also store my soil in a lidded tote.  It’s much easier to scoop it out of a tote than to reach down into a dusty bag and then sneeze my way back out.  It’s also helpful to have a wide shallow container for mixing and making soil blocks.  A shallow tote or a proper potting tray like this will get the job done.

There seems to be a thread of thriftiness in this blog post.  The truth is, you don’t need a lot of fancy equipment to start your flowers indoors.  If you can afford one splurge, I’d say buy a grow light.  Other than that, you can easily make do with what you have on hand.

Happy growing!

– Rosita